Adventures with Packraft: Steamboat Creek: rocks, rapids & sweat

We woke scratching bites, courtesy of all the tiny little gnats that I hadn't realized were dining on us the evening before. I'm quite pleased we brought our double rainbow tent instead of a tarp.

The night was warm, the sleeping bags used as a quilts, and the day held the promise of adventure.

Last night during one of Kirk's wanderings (while I love reading at camp in the backcountry, Kirk loves exploring) he crept as far downstream as possible to note that we would be entering a gorged section soon. Sure enough we rounded the corner from our camp and into our first of many gorgeous gorges. (say that five times fast!)

We pulled to river right to scout. The creek split into two channels, but we couldn't see much from where we exited our boats, so walked downstream a bit. The first channel broke into several smaller channels with the largest producing an imposing rapid. Imposing for all the rocks showing at this water level. We hemmed and hawed over running it, and upon further inspection deamed the rocks more than we wanted to deal with.

Part of the right channel...it broke off into a few little side channels like this

The main right channel rapid ahead

We put in (the rapid is on the upper left) above here when we returned to our boats

The island proved to be about 100 yards of a volcanic rock shelf and by the time we worked our way to the end of it, knew we wanted to swim the calm blue waters of the right channel to make our way to the island to see what the left channel had in store for us.

Island on the left

Again, the beauty of dry suits! We hopped in the water and were on the island in seconds. With a view of the left channel we determined that outlet too was too shallow to run. Bummer. But we worked our way back upstream to the point where the channels split to check out the conditions of the right channel from a different perspective. Hmmm, no dice.

Kirk goes for a swim

I had the brilliant idea of crossing the left channel and working our way upstream so that we could swim back to our boats (really, I didn't want to backtrack if we didn't have to). The creek was shallow enough to make our way across, and once on the opposite side we hiked upstream and swam across the full creek to our boats.

boats on the other side

That's when it happened. Our waterproof camera decided to crap out on that swim. No more camera. It has increasingly taken worse and worse photos until the whole thing fogged up and proved to be useless for the rest of the weekend, which was a shame because the MOST picturesque and KNARLY sections were next.

Well, we both decided to portage the right channel's rapid. Once below the rapid we were in a deep channel of rock and deep deep blue water. I just love it when the water is this color.

Right around the corner we spied an awesome rocky beach river left and decided it was time for lunch and a good nap. With only 10 miles to do over three days, we luxuriated in the time we had each day, and since all the scouting and portaging had taken some time, why not have lunch!

We paddled over, ate a bunch and spread out on the rocks for a snooze in the sun. We both brought our Eno hammocks to use on the trip, but as most of the shore was covered in poison oak, i wasn't brave (or stupid) enough to try and hang it from the surrounding trees. A rocky beach proved to be just perfect in the warm sun.

After rousing ourselves I looked downstream to notice the fencing of the parking area above the upper Steamboat Creek Falls. We were already really close to our next portage. The upper falls are about 20' and were NOT runnable at this water level, not counting the rebar and man-made junk in the second tier of the rapid. An old fish ladder was knocked down and pieces landed in the waterfall. Granted I would NEVER run them, but Kirk, that's another story.

Photo from http://www.northumpquaflyguide.com/2011/01/steamboat-struggle.html

The above photo was taken at a higher water level than we experienced.

Below that we had a calm mile of creek until we passed under a bridge that takes people to the falls over look and a campground.

We wanted to get away from the road to make camp that night, and we keep pushing on, not finding much suitable.

We entered another long gorge section. We got out to scout a few times, running one, walking the other due to the water being too low over a rocky ledge feature.

Then came the big daddy. We had to walk a few hundred yards on rock ledges (river right) to see exactly what the waterfall looked like, and it looked like death. Ok, not death exactly, but a fat log in the bottom made the run un-runable, again, not that I ever would. So this big one was worthy enough for me to dig out my phone to take the next photos. I don't know that my words could do the area justice.

Kirk dragging his boat behind on the portage

That is not for me, but incredibly cool. River-wide log in the bottom not visible in photo.


We had to drop ourselves & boats into the water up there

We were traversing quite high above the creek, but we managed to slide ourselves and our boats fairly close to the water and then threw our boats in water and jumped in off a small shelf. Which is a good reminder to me to practice getting in my boat from the water. I suck at it and thank goodness we weren't in moving water.

There were very marginal camping choices in the next little bit of creek, and we ended up doing a few more scouting journeys to check out more gorged sections. I was getting tired. We had both been sweating profusely in our dry suits over the last big portage...and that is not pleasant.

I cursed myself for passing by a better camp option than we had seen in a while when we ended up having to yet again scout. But as luck would have it, we found camp around the bend and I'm glad we waited.